CHAPTER TWO

Carly jerked awake, the pounding of her heart rattling her ribs like the bars of a cage.

No!

Her gaze probed the darkness, landing on a dresser, a chair, her husband’s empty pillow, the familiarity of her surroundings slowly penetrating her half-asleep state. A few seconds passed before she recognized the bedroom she shared with her husband.

She wasn’t in the living room of an apartment in Hannon.

There was no domestic disturbance. No angry, young meth head screaming profanity. No weeping woman.

No dead child.

Carly’s stomach revolted at the memory. She could never unsee that horror.

The cell phone on her nightstand rang. She reached for it, for once grateful that her sleep had been interrupted. The screen displayed her husband’s name, and her nerves scrambled. Why would Seth be calling her? He’d been working late on a homicide investigation. Had something happened to him?

She stabbed the “Answer” button. “Seth, what’s wrong?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “But I caught a case involving a child tonight. I know you’re on call, and this boy is going to need—” Seth blew out long breath. “Well, he needs you.”

Two years ago, Seth would have done his best to keep her off the case. Now he’d called her directly. She should be pleased.

But the terrible details he outlined in the next few minutes chilled her bones.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She ended the call, both in a rush to respond and because her stomach was still rebelling from the nightmare.

Carly darted from her bed to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face.

Get yourself together.

She brushed her teeth and dressed in jeans and a sweater. On her way downstairs, she tiptoed down the hall to her mother’s room to let Patsy know she was on babysitting duty.

Normally, Seth, Carly, and their eight-year-old daughter, Brianna, lived in the guest cabin behind the farmhouse in which Carly had grown up. But the tiny cabin hadn’t been built with an active child in mind. They’d started renovations in the summer. With the project not quite finished, they were living in the main house with Carly’s mom. While the situation wasn’t ideal from the perspective of Carly and Seth’s privacy, having Grandma down the hall was convenient when their professional responsibilities overlapped.

Like tonight.

In the kitchen, she brewed a single cup of coffee in the pod-style machine and grabbed a chocolate bar on her way out, consuming both during the forty-five-minute drive from her home in Solitude to the Rogue County seat of Hannon, but the sugar and caffeine barely penetrated the fog in her brain and body. Too many sleepless nights—too many nightmares—had compounded on one another. Her exhaustion was marrow deep, a systemic and depressed state that left her soul as weary as her body.

Deep inside her, a seed of doubt kept whispering, Why do you do this to yourself?

An hour after Seth’s call, she parked her Jeep at the address he’d given her, head aching from squinting at the dark road through the storm. She pulled her hood over her head and shoved her hands in the pockets of her coat. The rain echoed on the nylon as she trudged up the driveway of a two-story house. Emergency vehicles clogged the street.

Seth came off the porch and met her halfway down the driveway. The rain had plastered his blond hair to his head and molded his wet dress shirt to his muscular body.

His green eyes narrowed on her, intense as always. “Are you all right?”

“I think that’s what I should be asking you.” Her practiced eye scanned him for injuries and lingered on the dark splotches on his dress shirt and the knees of his trousers. “Blood?”

She pushed back at an encroaching, potentially crippling flashback.

Not now.

A child needed help, needed her.

“None of it is mine.” Seth’s mouth flattened into a grim line. “The boy is across the street. I thought it would be best to get him out of this place, and the neighbor offered. Bruce is with him.”

“How is Bruce handling this?” she asked.

“He’s keeping it together,” Seth said. “He couldn’t have a better FTO. Gabe is solid. Twenty years’ experience. Plenty of street smarts.”

“Good.” Carly stared over Seth’s shoulder at the dark house. A deputy stood by the door, guarding the scene. She started toward the front door, bracing herself. “I’d like to see where they kept the child.”

Seth caught her by the arm. “The entrance to the basement is outside. You don’t need to see the crime scene.”

Carly didn’t protest. Her nightmare was as fresh and vivid as a bright pool of blood on a dirty wood floor.

“I’m not being overprotective. I promise. But there’s no reason you need to be exposed to that scene, and frankly, I don’t want the scene to be any more compromised. I already have to deal with evidence contamination from the paramedics. That couldn’t be helped. The female victim was alive when we arrived.” Seth blinked, his gaze shifting away. “She didn’t make it to the hospital.”

“I’m sorry.” Carly put a hand on her husband’s forearm. After what she’d seen the previous month, she couldn’t imagine how he faced crime scene after crime scene.

Death after death.

He was a hero in every sense of the word. He would have done everything in his power to save the victim, and his inability to do so would haunt him, even if the outcome had been completely out of his control.

“I just want to know what the child endured, so I can understand his needs,” she said.

“I’ll show you where he was kept.” Turning, Seth put a hand on the small of her back and guided her around the side of the house. Even through the fabric of her coat, his touch grounded her and made her wonder how their relationship had taken that wrong turn two years ago. Thank God they’d put their marriage back together. She didn’t know how she would have gotten through the last month without him.

They walked three-quarters of the way around the property and stopped in front of an open set of bulkhead doors. Seth went first, holding out his hand to take hers. “Watch your step.”

He switched on a flashlight as they descended to the concrete floor. Seth illuminated the far corner of the space. “He was chained to the furnace.”

Oh my God.

Carly’s heart wept for the boy. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the worst case she’d ever seen. It wasn’t even close. There was no blood, no broken body, and no wailing, young mother.

The month before, she’d gone on a routine home visit to an apartment in Hannon. Hearing yelling and crying through the door, Carly had called the sheriff’s department for backup. The deputies had rammed the door, but it had been too late. The mother’s meth-head boyfriend had thrown the child against the wall. His head . . .

So much blood from one small child.

Carly shook off the memory.

This boy was still alive, and that fact was a shot of espresso to Carly’s attitude. It was time to focus on this child, whom she could help.

This was why she did what she did.

“May I have the light?” she asked.

“Sure.” Seth handed her his flashlight.

She played the light over the basement, stopping on a broken length of chain that snaked across the dusty cement and continuing to dozens of strewn empty water bottles and crumbled takeout bags. She sniffed. The sharp scent of urine in the musty air caught in her nose and soured her stomach.

“Do you have any idea how long he was kept down here?” She covered her mouth with the neck of her sweater and inhaled the faint scent of fabric softener.

“No.”

The dampness permeated Carly’s heavy coat, and her teeth rattled with a shiver. “It’ll be a miracle if he doesn’t have pneumonia.”

“He wasn’t coughing, and he seems to be breathing all right,” Seth said. “Not that he let me get that close. The only person he seems to trust is Bruce.”

“The child whisperer.” Carly’s brother had a tight bond with Brianna. “Do you think he was abused beyond this?” She inclined her head toward the basement prison.

As if this isn’t enough.

Seth lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know.”

Carly pivoted, the basement suddenly overwhelming her. She’d seen enough to understand at least the basics of what the boy had withstood. “Thanks. Let’s go see him.”

Seth led her back outside, and Carly inhaled the fresh, wet air. Despite her bone-deep chill, she left her hood down and welcomed the rain as they rounded the yard and headed for the house across the street.

Carly followed Seth into a tile-floored foyer. Seth introduced her to the homeowner, Reilly Jenkins.

“Let me take that for you, ma’am,” Mr. Jenkins said.

Carly handed over her dripping coat. “Thank you for your assistance tonight, Mr. Jenkins.”

“Glad to help, ma’am.” Mr. Jenkins hung her coat on a peg by the door. Then he nodded toward the back of the house. “The boy is in the kitchen.”

Carly paused in the doorway.

The child was six or seven years old. Thin and dirty, he had brown hair that hung in a tangled mop past his ears. He sat at a round oak table next to her brother. Tiny hands curled around a ceramic mug. A plate in front of him was scattered with crumbs.

“He saw the pie on the counter and asked for some.” Mr. Jenkins nodded toward half a pumpkin pie in an open, white bakery box. “So I gave him a piece and some hot chocolate. I hope that was okay.”

“Yes. Thank you,” Carly said.

An adult-size quilted flannel shirt dwarfed the child. Mr. Jenkins had given him more than pie.

“If I’d a known he was down there—” Mr. Jenkins’s voice broke.

The boy’s head snapped up, and the brown eyes that focused on Carly shone with terror for the brief second they connected with hers. She imagined any change—and any stranger—would frighten him after what he’d been through. The child’s gaze dropped to his mug.

“I’ll leave you to your business.” Mr. Jenkins backed away.

Bruce leaned close to the boy’s head and whispered in his ear. “That’s my sister. She’s okay.”

Keeping her distance, Carly leaned on the door frame. “Hi. I’m Carly. What’s your name?”

The child’s only response was to lean an inch closer to Bruce.

“I have a little girl about your age.” Carly slid her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and kept her tone casual. “Her name is Brianna. She has a pet goat.”

Still staring at his mug, the boy gave Bruce’s uniform sleeve an anxious tug.

“It’s true,” Bruce said. “His name is Prince Eric, and he gets into a lot of mischief.”

“Would you like to see his picture?” Carly asked.

The boy didn’t answer, but he shifted forward.

Carly drew her phone from her back pocket and eased toward the boy, as if she were approaching a wounded rabbit. She scrolled through her photos to a recent picture of Prince Eric standing on the roof of the small shelter in his pen. She set the phone on the table and slid it closer to the child. He leaned over and studied the picture for a full minute. When his posture relaxed, Carly lowered her body into the chair opposite him.

She reached across the table and scrolled to the next photo. “This is Brianna’s pony. Do you like animals?”

The boy reached a fingertip toward the phone, then hesitated.

“Go ahead,” Carly said. “There are more pictures.”

He scrolled through photos of her family, stopping on a shot of the whole family on the back deck of her mother’s house. He touched her face, then Bruce’s and Seth’s.

“That’s right,” Bruce said. “Carly and Seth and I all live on the same farm. We’re family.”

The boy stared at the picture.

“My sister is going to take you to the hospital tonight so a doctor can make sure you’re all right.” Bruce scrolled to the next picture. In it, he and Brianna were giving her pony a bath. “Then she’s going to find a place for you to stay. Okay?”

The boy didn’t answer, but he didn’t panic as Bruce got to his feet. Carly stood too, and the boy followed her lead. When she held her hand out to him, he took it. She led him to the door. Seth was no longer there.

“He can keep the shirt.” Mr. Jenkins wrinkled his nose. “His coat is hanging up. Not sure he would want to put it back on. It doesn’t smell so great.”

Neither did the boy. But the child grabbed his coat as they walked past it. He tugged his hand from hers and put it on. Smelly or not, it was better than nothing, and he’d no doubt learned what it was like to be cold.

She called the hospital and let them know she was bringing the boy in and why.

A few minutes later, the child cooperated as she herded him out the front door into the rain. Carly helped him into the booster seat in the back of her Jeep. He fastened his own seat belt. His gaze went to the window. A shudder ripped through his slim body as he stared at the house that had been his prison.

Carly slid behind the wheel and locked the doors. She tried to engage him on the short ride, but he didn’t respond to her. Ten minutes later, she parked near the emergency entrance. At five a.m., the lot was still dark. The boy complied with her requests, but his general air of detachment worried her.

The emergency room was quiet, and they were ushered into a private exam room.

“Hi, I’m Julie.” A pretty, dark-haired nurse smiled at him. “What’s your name?”

The child cringed without answering, but he didn’t resist as the nurse helped him out of his filthy clothes and into pediatric hospital pajamas. He cooperated as the young resident examined him. Carly put on gloves and went through his clothing in hopes that someone had marked the labels with his name, but she found no clue to his identity. His pockets were empty, his clothing tags blank. She put his clothes in a brown paper bag. Seth would want them as evidence.

“Can we talk in the hall while the nurses clean him up and bandage his scrapes?” the resident asked as she inclined her head toward the door.

“I’ll be right back,” Carly said to the boy.

She followed the resident out of the room and down a short length of hallway to the nurses’ station.

The resident talked while she scribbled on a clipboard. “He’s about six or seven years old. Physically, he’s slightly dehydrated and malnourished, but I don’t see anything a good bath and some meals won’t cure. His pupils are very sensitive to light. I suspect he’s been kept in the dark for some time. He has some minor scrapes and bruises but no serious injuries. His refusal to speak concerns me. I recommend a consultation with our new psychiatrist.”

“I agree,” Cary said. “When can we have that done? I don’t want him to spend any more time here than necessary.”

She was already sorting through possible foster homes. Her options were limited. Rogue County’s foster care system was inadequate.

The resident finished her notes. “I’ll give you his number. He’s very good.”

“Hey! Stop! Help!” a woman shouted.

A loud crash sounded from the direction of the examination room. Carly spun and sprinted down the hall. Before she’d run three steps, a man dressed in a white lab coat over green hospital scrubs, complete with a surgical cap and mask, emerged from the room with the boy tucked under one arm.

The boy looked back at Carly, fear opening his eyes until they were entirely rimmed with white.

“Stop!” Desperation fueled Carly’s legs.

This can’t be happening.

But the man turned and walked briskly in the opposite direction.

“Security! Stop that man!” Carly ran faster, horror congealing in her belly, the scene from a month ago replaying in a raw loop in her head.

He was heading for the exit.

With the child.

She couldn’t let the boy be taken.